Because if we're going to try and stop the misuse of our favorite comics and their protagonists by the companies that write and publish them, we've got to see what both the printed and online comics news is doing wrong. This blog focuses on both the good and the bad, the newspaper media and the online websites. Unabashedly. Unapologetically. Scanning the media for what's being done right and what's being done wrong.

Wanda Maximoff, evil mutant and Scarlet Witch, will perhaps best be remembered for her hard work in attempted genocide when she used her reality-warping powers to destroy the mutant race. However, she achieved a great many other things before recently being taken from us by fellow Uncanny Avenger Rogue; she was an Avenger for much of her career, and a Defender at times, and even the leader of Force Works, which doesn’t suggest particularly high standards. Yet she never really spent time in any team with an X in the name. Peculiar, that. Everyone else in her family has done it. At times it seems like everyone else in the mutant race has done it. But not Wanda. Less interested in hanging out with mutants, more interested in wiping them from existence.

Despite this, Wanda will be fondly remembered as a loving wife by her husband… no, wait, Vision has his emotions rebooted. She will be remembered as a doting mother by her two… no, hang on, Wiccan and Speed were raised by different parents. She will be remembered as a devoted daughter by… huh, I guess Magneto didn’t actually know he had any kids until years later.

So, Wanda will be remembered for her fickle desire to wipe out an entire race of people, and that’s basically that. Rest in peace, Wanda Maximoff.

Seriously, stay dead. You were a monster.

Because they want her to be. Another op-ed that reads like a Trutherist's mindset, brimming with baseless hatred, and no explanation why they ever wanted to read Lee and Kirby's famous creations, or why they're even reading them now. They can say this was satirical jokes, but some things just aren't funny, and that includes thumbing their noses at decent creators who spent lifetimes conjuring up what they thought people would like to read about, only to discover some mental cases out there have no gratitude whatsoever. Would they say that about Spider-Man? Or about Mary Jane Watson? At this point, I figure they'd definitely say it about Mary Jane. They'd probably say she was nothing but a dishonest harpy, perpetuating the libel set up in Sins Past. I don't understand why these people - the same ones who'd doubtless complain about the simple approach DC had to storytelling in the Silver Age - wanted to read Marvel books if they dislike the heroes, co-stars and character development so much.

And what a telling inaccuracy they print there, claiming every family member but her spent time with the X-Men. Wrong. Her twin brother Quicksilver was a member of the Avengers too for many years. Any involvement he had with the X-Men until the end of the last century was minimal.

They also ignore that Brian Bendis, awful a writer as he is, did exonerate Wanda after such a prolonged period nearly 2 years ago. Or did he? Maybe he didn't. In any case, the Comics Alliance website has only proven why real fans shouldn't rely on such a contemptuous site, whose staff writes up commentaries that are so crass they're not even funny.

Update: some of the commentors on the article are very horrifically biased too, but there is one who manages to make some sense:

If it's any consolation, she doesn't have reality warping/godly powers; like everything else about House of M, that was entirely made up when the writers/editors decided that a character who mostly makes water mains burst and stuff should become the scapegoat for anything they wanted to happen. It's weird how that one storyline, which wasn't even any good, now supplants the 40 years in which she was a goody-goody Silver Age girl with moderately useful powers. But then I guess the point of House of M was that it was aimed at new readers who weren't familiar with the previous 40 years of Avengers... and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, I suppose. Just funny that people who understandably object to their favorite characters being written out of character accept House of M as in-character, which it clearly is not in any possible way.

There's nothing wrong with appealing to new readers, but that doesn't explain why they'd want a new audience to immediately loathe a longtime cast member. Yet this does seem to be what modern editors have in mind: market to new audiences (in theory, that is, because any new readers they achieved have been very sparse) while banking on the assumption they have no interest in the older material, all the while trying to obscure the older stories in full favor of the new ones. That was undoubtably the whole idea back in 1994 when DC published Emerald Twilight, and now, the problem's metastisized. It's gotten to the point where we can only wonder if one day, they'll decide to stop publishing the Golden/Silver Age archives to justify their directions. But if I were new to the scene and found this out, I'd be insulted.

The commentor is also right that it's inexplicable why people who might claim to be purists would view House of M as fait accompli, even begrudgingly. By going along with what came next, they're only encouraging the editors and writers to keep on with these awful steps. It's what I call Emperor's New Clothes mentality. And they wonder why the medium is collapsing?

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About me

I'm Avi Green

From Jerusalem, Israel

I was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, and moved to Israel in 1983. I also enjoyed reading a lot of comics when I was young, the first being Fantastic Four. I maintain a strong belief in the public's right to knowledge and accuracy in facts. I like to think of myself as a conservative-style version of Clark Kent. I don't expect to be perfect at the job, but I do my best.